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Watch the BBC first on iPlayer 👉 bbc.in/iPlayer-Home 64% of calories consumed by children in the UK are now from ultra-processed food. Dr Chris Van Tulleken finds out more.
You can stream What Are We Feeding Our Kids? on BBC iPlayer 👉 bbc.in/34mfgik
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When I visited the UK in the 1970s, almost no one was visibly overweight; I was shocked in 2019 that the Brits were looking like we Americans.
Similar in Ireland
There were morbid obese people in every decade of the last century. Even in regions where the their diet is considered to be very good some people still pack on weight. The pandemic has been noticed since the 70s and a number of things changed at the same time. Moving away from whole plant food but also seeing the quality of those foods go down with intensive farming.
I'm pretty sure it was the same till the first 90s, wnen as a young boy I visited England for the very first time
Gerald Mcmullon most fat people were rich but that has changed
A lot of us gave up smoking. Cigarettes are an appetite suppressor.
It's not just a problem of ultra-processed food. As a child growing up in the 1970s, it was really frowned upon to eat in between meals. You were expected to eat enough at breakfast to satisfy you until lunchtime and eat enough at lunchtime to satisfy you until dinnertime, and then we had a bedtime drink of hot chocolate, Ovaltine or Horlicks and two plain biscuits. A single packet of biscuits would last almost a week and crisps and sweets were given once a week as a special treat (until I got older and was given weekly pocket money). That all changed in the 1980s when we started to be told we would go into 'starvation mode' if we didn't snack and huge multi-bag snacks started appearing in our supermarkets as well as a lot more convenience foods. I followed the trend along with many others and now I'm obese, but I've decided that the three meals a day, no snacking and not eating after 6pm (unless I'm going out to dinner) is a good model for me to follow from now on - as well as portion-control.
Good luck with your weight loss journey I hope it works out for you!
@@ReubenWslay Thank you. I wouldn't ever body-shame anyone, but speaking from personal experience, I find being obese uncomfortable, upsetting and embarrassing, never mind all the health issues that have crept up as I've become older.
@Marina E Oh, I completely understand! I lost six stones two years before lockdown because I didn't want my gallbladder removed (I'd been in hospital with jaundice after a 'gallbladder attack'). During the lockdown I've put on four because I returned to my sugar addicted ways! I'm beginning to lose it again, but I'm so cross with myself! I'm back to healthy eating, because as you've said, starvation diets don't work - and I've tried many ridiculous diets over the decades!
@Marina E Pact accepted! Good luck in your endeavours, Marina.
A x
Have only two meals a day; more greens, no sugar and reap amazing benefits
I don't know if this will help anyone, I'll post it anyway. When I had 4 small children & myself and my husband were working a lot, I found a way to eat healthier. At night, after the kiddos were in bed, I made the dinner for the next day. When I got home, all I had to do was put it in the oven. I had chopped veggies for a salad the night before. The kiddos set the dinner table. BOOM. Healthy dinner, no processed food or fast food.
That's the way to maintain health. Your kids are blessed to have your as their momma.
@@KPlyf Thank you
Absolutely beautiful thinking!
Same here. We now convinced everyone & no more processed food, foods, drinks full with sugar, chems. That worked & we no one is taking any medication, we look younger as well.
(Thu 01 July 2021 18h38)
That's very clever, and it's definitely dedication, well done.
1. Fewer single-income households = no longer having one person able to spend so much time at home managing food and home-cooking meals
2. Longer work hours = people are hungry and tired when they get home and just can't face spending more time cooking properly rather than eating something more processed but convenient and quicker
Boil an egg, in fact I know loads of quick cook meals which are health and can either be done from scratch or using time saving ingredients that aren't over processed. Learn to cook, there's no excuse. If you're to tired to cook a full meal, eat something on toast. 🙄
@@julianaylor4351 boil an egg for dinner every night? That’s not that healthy. Neither is eating bread for every meal (shock horror - bread is also a processed food).
My parents separated in 1974 if my mom hadn’t planned her day to cook dinner from scratch she could not of fed 4 kids
I see excuses
Utter rubbish. I’ve worked 10 hours day with 2 kids and prepared cooked meals everyday.
Anyone who says with a straight face that ultraprocessed foods don't cause obesity is either stupid or malicious.
No. Obesity is caused by a chronic over consumption of calories. I am neither stupid nor malicious. I would say you are very mis-informed.
@@gimp497 But you see it is simple. Calories ie energy cannot be created out of nowhere. Junk food is not good of course but the reason people get fat is too many calories. If you eat a lot of junk food then yes you will take in a lot of calories.
Carbs are not addictive as you suggest - this is myth sold to the low carb zealots by their proponents. In WWII people in the UK had very little meat or fat or protein of any kind but they ate a lot of carbs from home made bread, potatoes and root veggies, and they were leaner and healthier than today because they did not over-consume calories and they exercised a lot more - walking, digging the garden hand washing.
As far as vegetable oils are concerned there is a lot of evidence suggesting the mediterranean diet, which contains a lot of olive oil is extremely healthy. Of course you are entitled to your opinion but it is not supported by most of the science.
@@marcdaniels9079 everything you've said reinforced my point. The nature of ultraprocessed foods is high caloric density with little to no nutrients and that stimulates over consumption. Real food gives you satiety, so is very difficult to overeat in a proper nutrient dense diet.
Ps, olive oil is technically not in the same category of vegetables oils, apart from being a fruit, the extraction is made in cold temperatures maintaining the quality proteties. Most of the vegetables oils are made from a complex chemical process in high temperatures and that's what makes them "bad"
@@keomafernandes7442 So your post said "Anyone who says with a straight face that ultraprocessed foods don't cause obesity is either stupid or malicious"
That's what I object to. I am neither of these things.
Ultraprocessed foods do not cause obesity - eating in a chronic calorie surplus causes obesity. You can easily get obese without eating ultraprocessed foods. Why is this important ? Well because too many people are looking for an excuse - and blaming the ultra-processed food industry is convenient but overlooks the fact that it doesn't matter how bad these foods are( I agree with everything on your first paragraph and my friends laugh at me because I won't eat a Big Mac) , people are putting them into their bodies. If we got rid of them overnight people would still need to exercise awareness and CONTROL of what they are eating. You can get obese on natural healthy wholesome foods like cheese, butter, steak, nuts etc.
Thanks for the correction on Olive Oil. I still don't agree that all vegetable oils should be removed from the diet. A quick spray of corn oil in a frying pan to cook your eggs is not a big deal and not what is making people obese. However if they deep fry everything in vegetable oil and consume too much then they are eating a lot of calories ...I don't need to repeat the whole thing about calories and obesity.
@@gimp497 Well you are entitled to your opinion. However putting aside the extreme notion of a carnivore diet there is no doubt that some meats are extremely calorie dense due too high fat content and since it’s calories that create obesity I would have to disagree that meat is not linked to obesity at all.
Research from 2016 presented to the 18 th International Conference on Nutrition and Food Sciences in Zurich also looked at the contribution of meat to obesity.
University of Adelaide PhD student Wenpeng You examined the global availability of sugar and meat and the impact it had on obesity rates in 170 countries, and found a strong correlation between the two.
After accounting for differences between countries, including levels of urbanisation, physical activity and calorific intake, the research found the availability of meat could account for 13% of the obesity rate - the same level as sugar.
So clearly there is linkage
By the way did you know that Doctor Atkins the erstwhile founder of the Keto movement weighed 258 lbs when he died. While this an N-=1 data point perhaps worth considering.
And this is also why the planet is drowning in plastic. Look at all the packaging in processed food! (And yes I know fresh fruit and veg is wrapped in plastic but at least the supermarkets are slowly changing and more fruit and veg is sold loose and they’re supplying paper bags etc.)
By Law the Company or person selling thd food in packaging has to recycle it. So you can a) unwrap in the place of purchase and give all recycling to the relevant manager if recycling bins arent provided in place of purchase or b) keep receipt, clean all recyclable packaging and return with receipt to place of purchase.....
If more people lumped that shite back onto the Companies allowing excess packaging theyd soon change it!
(Lidl has recycling bins for customers in shop)
@@amandadonegan2137 and here’s what happens to the plastic that you put in recycling. It’s shipped out to Indonesia where they burn it in large open landfill sites and the people living next to it get lung problems due to the toxic smoke in the air.
I've thought of the same thing. I use reusable bags and bring my own clean used plastic bags to put fruit and vegetables in when needed. Often times I just put the fruit/veg directly in the cart without a bag...you have to wash it anyway.
Another tip for anybody reading this: when buying a drink at a fast food restaurant, skip the plastic lid (and straw) if you're dining in. People just reflexively grab a lid, sit down at a table, then toss it all in the trash. The lid is for preventing spills in the car --not for holding a straw when your dining in.
@@amandadonegan2137 Much better to conserve than to recycle.
@@amandadonegan2137 recycling is useless. Most things can't be recycled , most countries don't even recycle, and something can be recycled max 8-10 times (majority only twice). Recycling is NOT the solution.
One thing differentiates people in 2021 from people in the 70: TIME. In the 70's, people had time to cook, one family usually could live off 1 source of revenue, which leaves the other adult free to shop and cook. Nowadays, how many families can live with just 1 person working? if our purchasing power didn't fall off so dramatically, we would't rely so much on processed and convenience foods.
@Gaynor Lewis I actually don't. Capitalism should acctually promote a higher standard of living for all, what we've experienced in the West is a drop in our purchasing power, and a dramatic one.
agreed,something a lot of people in this comments section fail to acknowledge as well, most people do not have time to manage every aspect of thier diet to acheive healthy perfection, if anything companies should be held more accountable and regulation s on what you can and cannot put in food should be tighter
To be honest eating healthy doesn't require a lot of time. I mean, if you wanna do a super elaborated soup by yourselves i get it. But nowadays there many "ready to eat soup", you just have to heat it up and wait 15-20 minutes. I can't belivie people don't have 30 seconds to put the product in the pot and wait 20 minutes while they can watch a tv series or do other stuff.
Even as recently as 1978 my grandfather used to go home from work for a cooked lunch almost every day, then he would be home for a cooked dinner in the evening. This was only possible because the circumstances of the era meant my grandmother never really worked a paid day in her life.
Following his retirement in 1985, the only times they ate out as such was when visiting family in their homes, or when on holiday. Rest of the time my grandmother just crashed around in the kitchen like the 1950s were back again. My grandfather had _zero_ cooking skills and could barely make himself a sandwich or boil an egg.
@@giovannibez9509 yeah but "ready made" healthy food is super expensive. So you're either lacking in time to cook from scratch or money to buy prepared foods.
I was born in 1954. The only time we ate food prepared by others was a weekly fish and chips run. We never ate in restaurants as a family but very occasionally one or two children would eat out with one parent. We did eat some kind of processed food once a week like steak and kidney pies with homemade chips or pork pies and salad. We had few canned items and the worst foods were cakes and biscuits and sweets.
My sister in law eats a 90% processed food diet. Then she told me she couldn't get the covid vaccine because she's allergic to sodium chloride. Girl you eat that by the bucket.
😂😂😂😂😂😂No way
Haha!
Probably just telling you she didn't choose to get it. Good for her.
If she didn't get the jabs and you did then she's smarter than you.
Another thing not mentioned here is that the size of serving plates have more than doubled. A typical 'dinner plate' you buy now is ENORMOUS compared to the dinner plates you could buy in the seventies, and so is a soup/cereal bowl. And it's basic psychology that people are going to fill whatever plate they use... switching to a side plate and small dessert bowl for your meals will help you lose weight without even trying, because you can't put as much food on it, but your brain will still see it as a full plate and feel satisfied.
Another factor is that ultra processed food / junk is less satiating and creates more cravings so you are more likely to eat more when making bad food choices. When he himself made the change to eating the majority of his food from the ultra processed food he ate more and craved more.
You make a very good point.
That is definitely part of the problem. And then between those large meals, we are constantly snacking all day and into the night. People say they are eating too much, but if they were honest with themselves they would see that there is a lot of volume in their daily diet.
And no one eats with a teaspoon anymore. The larger spoons used to be used only for soup. Now they're standard.
in america its even worse like at every restaurant here they give you way too much food so i cant finish it every time 😂😂
We need more allotments, especially for the kids in cities. My allotment costs £9 a year, plus money for seeds, but you get so much fruit and veg once you learn how to grow and rotate. Good exercise as well!
I agree
I recommend sharing allotments with friends or family. I part share two. So do my dad and uncle. This way you always have someone to help out when other things get on top of you and you can help out in turn. Also, lots of allotments associations do small starter plots which you can try to see if you like it. Good way to test it out.
Most Councils refuse point blank to make allotments available...even though they STOLE THE COMMON LAND FROM THE COMMON PEOPLE
@@amandadonegan2137 I think a lot of the stealing was somewhat pre councils.... And serfs may have had some limited rights to use common land but they weren't allowed to do much else, even marry ( without permission, or sometimes even at all) so it wasn't exactly a glamorous existence.
Yeah, my dad has an allotment but he grows so much, it fills up a large part of the freezer & it annoys my mum so much 😂
When I started exercising, I noticed that I was getting fitter but not losing weight. Then I started eating better, cut out almost all sugar and stuff like that and now ive lost a lot of weight, mainly around my hips, and im feeling way better
Good job 😊
Yes! Science shows that exercise doesn’t help you lose weight. It helps with stamina, heart health, joint health, depression, etc. But where you carry weight in the body is due to your hormones (insulin). Lower the insulin = lower your weight!
This might be a short lived success. The body adjusts and then finds ways to pack on the fat again. So the first thing is a better diet - whole plant foods and reducing if not totally eliminating processed foods. Eat proper meals and avoid snacking during the day. All easier said than done and even if this works for a good percentage of people for some it is still not enough.
Yep. For people wanting to lose weight they really need to focus on diet and not so much on exercise. Of course it's important to stay active and do some intense exercise regularly. But for weight loss it really is about cutting down on the bad stuff.
My 41 yr old mate has 12 sugars in his cuppa no joke, eats mainly takeaways, processed foods, crisps, biscuits etc and smokes like a trooper yet he’s as thin as a rake and has had no health issues but I’m convinced it’s going to catch up with him in the next decade.
In 1980, many families had a stay-at-home mom who was able to cook with ingredients. Now, families can't make ends meet unless both parents work, and kids are expected to be involved in multiple extra-curricular activities. No one has time to eat, let alone cook un-processed meals these days.
Stop telling the truth in a post truth world.
In this modern, "progressive and open minded" era, it's easier and the norm for parents to simply pay their independent children to buy dinner on the way home from study/work.
@@originalunoriginal4055 progressive and open minded = obesity epidemic
You can’t make ends meet cos you’ve all fallen for that buy everything now and pay later. We didn’t have as much of that crap back then. It was mostly those catalogues with a few cheap items that not many fell for.
You don't need a stay at home mum to cook food 😂🤦♀️
I grew up in the 50ties and still eat meals cooked every day with fresh produce. I am totally shocked at the amount of processed foods are consumed now. I can honestly say I do not buy processed foods at all because having tasted them I don't find them as tasty as meals I cook.
This! Sometimes, I want to spoil myself a bit and think, "Let's get a jar of curry sauce and some noodles," but after a couple of bites, I remember why I never do this. All I taste is a very salty kind of wallpaper paste.
Same with takeaways. They taste inferior to our cooking and don’t actually keep you full for long. And flipping expensive
I once tried Dolmio sauce, it was awful, like seawater with the barest hint of tomato and no other flavour.
It’s astonishing to see those numbers! Over the years I saw a drastic improvement in my clients’ health and weight just by opting for a home-cooked food. It’s shocking to hear from them they’ve realized they saved money too, so, convenience is not convenient anymore.
convenience is big bucks in the stores... they earn heaps on lazy people... and all the UPF is also due to lazy people... and the more crud they eat, the lazier they get
Processed meat is definitely cheaper, by and large. Try buying steak for the same price as a burger. Or chicken for the same price as frozen, breaded stuff. Fish is the same. Making a pie might be cheaper but is time consuming: do we want to eat our midweek dinners after 8pm? Apparently, that’s not healthy either.
A lot of gack is in pre-made sauces. The outlay to make your own sauces comes in spices and bases which are only economical if you use them regularly.
Japan has fairly low obesity rates because their "unhealthy" processed food items aren't nearly as unhealthy compared to what you'd find in a Western convenience store.
True, the instant noodle soups in Japan are much healthier than the equivalent pot noddle here. Udon noodles w dried mushrooms, soya broth etc filling and quick.
Yep. Japan is world leading when it comes to street food and plastic-wrapped junk from convenience stores. Yet find me a truly obese Japanese person, don't think I've ever seen one.
However there are some very fat people in China.
They have smaller portion sizes too the US has really big portion sizes to the point where a small can feel like a medium or even large
@@halfbakedproductions7887 You're such a sycophant, on your knees for anything Japan. China has 1.3 billion people; of course you'll see more fat people in China.
@@halfbakedproductions7887 just like japan, obese people are frown upon in China. However, China is suffering from a more and more westernized diet. The thing with China and Japan is though, that people are either skinny or really, really fat.
It's no coincidence that auto-immune disorders have greatly increased in frequency alongside this change in diet.
Well this is really interesting because yes, autoimmunity is linked to high levels of inflammation and our food and environment have become so toxic that this is a big factor, but the thing I'm also interested in is the role of trauma in the development of autoimmune disorders. We are only beginning to make this link as a society and so much more work needs to go into this but it turns out we are toxic in more ways than what we eat!
@Okay. Because what you eat also affects the diversity of your gut bacteria.... Which affects the nervous system of your digestive system (the enteric nervous system - ENS). It has been described as a second brain (albeit a much smaller one).
Autoimmune is very closely linked to gluten. Sure it could be partly because they put wheat in everything. I think also the Chemically-extracted seed oils: switch from veg oil to lard and beef dripping.
Yes. Processed food is out of balance bc it is made in factories instead of on the land.
You will get too much sugar and too little fibers. This makes you hungry and buy more…
Also there is a difference between a natural vitamin in a food and the exact same molecule produced chemically. So you can have food enhanced with vitamins and minerals that the body does not process.
And it is too clean. We need healthy micro organisms in our food and in our life. I believe that a lot of allergies are the result of young children not being introduced to harmless micro organism. The immune system has to learn what makes the body sick and what doesn’t.
Autoimmune disorders are often seen alongside general inflammation in the body, which is why doctors will probably use blood tests to monitor your inflammatory markers during the treatment to monitor disease activity (although inflammation isn't always relevant).
There might well be a link.
The veg selection makes me laugh. In 1980 almost no one was eating butternut squash and Broccoli was still up and coming. We mostly lived on peas and carrots and cabbage as a distant third.
Don't forget swede
Exactly. More fruit and veg are eaten now or at least bought for the fridge and vegans. Meat potatoes carrots peas cabbage and pudding was it back then. No one was shovelling all that fruit and veg.
Sprouts were also a common 'evil' for Saturday and Sunday dinner for me as a kid in the 80s. I am glad my mum made us eat up all our veg, even though I hated a lot of it, (or no afters!) because now as a 40 year old adult, veg is my favourite! I love trying new veg recipes and piling those sprouts, cabbage, swede on my plate.
You are right. Fruit was apples and oranges with seasonal fruit in short bursts. We lived on porridge, bread and jam, steamed pudding and custard and mince. A roast would last us for days. We must have packed in a lot of calories and that is not counting all the hot sweet tea. They are wrong to say it’s not the activity levels. We were incredibly active from dawn till dusk.
Don't forget spuds.
When I grew up in the 1970s/1980s in a rural town, there was simply no junk food (apart from breakfast cereals). There were no takeaways (and you had to travel 15 miles to get fish and chips). I think I had my first pizza in about 1972 (probably at the first Pizza Express), but that was in London, and I didn't have another until about 1980.
Slowly over the 1980s, fast food started to arrive (pizza etc), and after that, what used to be fast food started to become takeaway food. And after that, takeaway food would even be delivered. Takeaways make their money by serving low-cost, but high-margin carohydrates (pizza is just a form of bread that makes takeaways rich).
Roll forward nearly 40 years and people's understanding of what is 'food' has changed. People think it is perfectly normal to buy a stack of frozen pizza (and have no concept that pizza was virtually unknown prior to 1980s in many towns in the UK).
It's rather depressing when I see my 20-year-old nephew ballooning in weight at an age when I, and all my friends, were rake-thin.
I could scarcely find a decent pizza because they were all stodge-bombs,so I ate pizza very rarely - until in about 2004 a lady friend introduced me to ones that a local Italian restaurant were making. The availability of pizzas I would consider buying and eating,even from shops and supermarkets,has improved immensely since then.
It's true that fish and chip shops used to be the one fast food takeaway option widely avaiable,and sweets,cakes,biscuits,etc. were occasional treats to be looked forward to,not everyday staples. We went outside to play for hours when at least some of the evenings were light,our tummies rumbled and we couldn't wait for dinner time - and I,too,was rake slim up to the age of 20. But in the 80s burger joints,an import from the US that was at first excitingly fashionable but would later be viewed as downmarket,proliferated in just about every High Street here in the south of England,followed soon by a host of other takeaway options. From the second half of that decade onwards the country's waistines went on their inexorable rise. Lifestyles became far more sedentary,especially among the young. The vacant plots of land we used to chase around,kick balls about,climb things and get up to mischief on were swallowed up by development and NIMBYism as the housing market trumped everything. Consequently,kids were left desperately limited for near-to-home places to run around and play on and release pent-up energy while from the 70s onwards the exponential rise in vehicular traffic,in all its time-short impatience,rendered streets far less safe and inviting.
Can you try and educate your nephew maybe?
@@mrtoad1408 I agree,though I admit that "educate" has gone into my sin-bin of words I refuse to use much anymore,because of the insufferable snobbiness of some of the people that like to bandy it about a lot.
The worst, final part of this fiasco is, as you say, that people have completely lost any sense of what "normal" eating is like. Try going out to eat virtually anywhere, fast or fancy food, and eating a portion that would have been "normal" in the 70s. I can't tell you how many friends I have who think they're eating "healthy" if they're not eating burgers, fries, and pizza, but who absolutely stuff themselves with bread carbs and just plain too much food.
Say what you want about vegans but when I turned vegan, that immediately barred me from eating the majority of ultra-processed foods available on the market and forced me to buy fresh ingredients and home-cook meals to be absolutely sure what's in there. Not saying it's impossible to eat healthy without turning vegan but it definitely changes your mindset in the right direction.
Couldn't agree more. People will say a vegan diet is restrictive but it forces you to stop buying pre-made crap and I began cooking so much more foods from scratch that I would never have tried otherwise.
Saved so much time, money and thinking after going vegan. Because i realised I didn't need many things
i want to try veganism, even if just for a week to see if i can do it. i eat so much crap and i think cutting out many certain foods will help me be more conscious of what I'm eating and prepare my own meals
Agreed. However, watch out for some of these 'vegan' meatless meats, they can be ultra processed.
Not that I disagree, but bear in mind that a lot of junk food is vegan, as well
That's not the full picture, since the 70s how often we eat has significantly increased, the constant grazing and eating too frequently us also a major contributor
Agreed. But I suspect that's a result of the type of food, too. Nutrient dense food is far more likely to be satiating than something out of a box. So you don't get "hangry" every two hours.
@@Daniko2 Agreed. It's really hard to over eat when you eat meat and two veg. Start the day with cereal, pastry or smoothie and you're ravenous by 11.
We had biscuits for in between meals. And sweet tea.
Starches and sugar make grazing a biological cycle. Insulin goes down and that signals the brain to get out the feeling of hunger. It happens every 2-3 hours. Whereas, if there is fiber, protein, and/or saturated fat with no starch or sugar, there is no signal of hunger every two hours. Grains and candy are the problem. People need vegetables, low sugar fruit, maybe some fatty meat or sardines.
My mom cooked almost every single night except on Friday when we’d order a pizza and watch a movie together. Other than that, it was all home-cooked stuff (and this was growing up in the 90s). In the 2000s however, it became all about diet food and pre-made dinners in plastic wrapping.
Nowadays, in my 30s, I cook every day several times a day. I usually make a stew over the weekend and then freeze half of it for days I’m too busy or too tired to cook. Just pull it out of the freezer that morning and by the time I get home from work it’s thawed out and ready to be reheated over the stove for dinner. I can’t remember the last time I ate fast food. Nothing tastes as good as a home-cooked meal. ❤
Just ordered my second takeaway of the day and needed something to watch whilst waiting for it to arrive, cheers BBC TH-cam!
A sign, an awakening...one step at a time reduce the frequency of UPF and increase natural ones.
@@mothiurNCL And do what exactly with my Papas points?
@@SmurfyJCK sell them for some opiates
I'm away from home 11+ hours a day. There isn't a single convenience food in my fridge/freezer. People who claim they don't have time to cook a meal are either lying or they're lazy. Also, it doesn't take a huge amount of time to throw together a decent plate of food.
You only have to look at the way almost everything we buy - including vegetables - is packaged, mostly in plastic. Every damn thing is in plastic. Hardly a truly healthy product to be seen. Intensive farming, pesticides, additives, sugar, processing, fats, fatty meats…
Our health is all about our food. You are - literally - what you eat.
Government needs to force a reduction in plastic use by food chains, and to promote healthy *cheap* natural food. Sort it out. You can’t leave it up to ‘advice’. Food producers and sellers will never do anything that they think will affect their profits.
Get veg out of plastic for a start, and make it cheap. Increase the prices of processed crap, tax foods that are unhealthy if necessary, even limit them. Promote food that is good for you, not just what makes people rich.
Just my opinion
I agree we must do something about it, but taxing things really isn’t the solution. It just leaves the poorer behind.
@@BaileyDixon That’s very true, and it would not be right at all if the poor were disadvantaged. But I’m suggesting that they just switch things round so that crap unhealthy food is taxed more highly and costs more, and that they ensure that healthy fresh food costs less, so that the poor can eat more healthily and not be forced into eating instant noodles and poor quality sugary fatty over-processed stuff just because it’s cheap…
I totally agree with everything you wrote except for one thing. Fatty meat doesn't belong on that list. People were eating unprocessed fatty meat, like lamb or pork chops, for generations without any issues like obesity. Red meat and full fat dairy consumption has been on a steep downward trend for decades and yet obesity continues to rise. The nutritional research, which is usually funded by "big food", got it flat out wrong on saturated fats, and people are beginning to wake up to this fact. It's the processed oils, high carbs (like breakfast cereals), added sugars etc that are the problem. You will NOT get fat by eating old fashioned food, like meat and two veg.
Well said
Not access to cheaper fresh food in poor neighborhoods would change things too. Areas of dense and poor populace tend to have a lack of access to quality food
I live in the US where I’ve seen so many recommendations about what to eat, when to eat, how often, etc. When I was younger (I’m 54 now), I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted. However, snacks were very rare in my house. My parents came from Cuba in 1962 and were from households where homemade meals were made every day for every meal. My parents raised their kids the same way. Of course once I was in high school and had friends who grew up on processed foods and fast foods, I ended up trying those foods and (unbelievably) enjoying them a bit. Why? Lots of salt, lots of foods from boxes or frozen (pizza), and fatty meats or poor quality meats from fast food restaurants. Luckily, I was still eating homemade meals at home which included a small serving of meat, chicken or fish, a small side of rice, black beans, and a salad with only a tiny bit of oil and vinegar for dressing. I didn’t even know creamy dressings existed until I started going to restaurants with friends. I was never overweight or out of shape from childhood all through to my early 40s.
Anyhow, fast forward to my mid to late 40s. Peri/Menopause didn’t help my inability to stay fit but unlike what many people believe, peri/menopause is not the main culprit to later in life weight gain. At least not for me. My body had just had enough of the quick and convenient cereal for dinner, pizza on Friday nights and a cheeseburger from Houston’s restaurant every Sunday. Plus a lot of other bad choices. Last year I ended up at 165lbs on 5’5”, which, for me, was overweight and my BMI and body fat percentage was below obese but still too high for my health. I really thought about why my body had changed so much from basically weighing anywhere from 110-125 most of my life, to being 165. I realized that while calories are the only way to gain weight, the quality of those calories matter.
What did I do? I went cold turkey straight into being a vegan and I’ve never looked back or craved any of the foods that are not a part of being vegan. I also ate very little to no processed foods (although I did make rice my main carb of the day). I didn’t follow anyone’s plan or restrict my calories - I just ate natural foods until I felt slightly full or satisfied. This turned out to be around 1,200 calories per day.
My breakfast consists of 3/4 cup oatmeal made with water, blueberries (or other berry or apples), and a banana, with two tbs of peanut butter slightly melted and drizzled on top. My first meal of the day is never before noon (because I’m not hungry) and can be as late as 2pm (because I’m not hungry). I started listening to my body and realizing that in the past I would say because it was breakfast time or lunchtime or snack time or dinner. You get it. I learned within the first few days of going vegan that my body actually lets me know when I’m hungry (and not famished or starving, that’s not healthy to wait for those feelings of hunger). So anyhow, the oatmeal breakfast is so satisfying and filling (and includes many vitamins and minerals from the fruit and protein from the peanut butter) that I’m not hungry again for another 6-8 hours. It’s true. Sometimes ten hours! For my next and last meal I have either a salad with lots of veggies including spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, etc., with some oil and vinegar (I limit my oil intake even oils that are supposedly healthy for you like olive oil). But I also eat rice with frozen veggies that I microwave when I’m not really very hungry and I just want to eat something easy to make. My go to, last meal of the day, are basically “burrito” bowls or whole wheat tortilla wraps. I prep for a about 7 days, yet I’m still able to add and subtract some foods throughout the week because who wants to eat the same thing everyday? Not me. So I chop onions, shallots, green onions, poblano peppers, red/green/yellow/orange (all four) peppers, baby Bella mushrooms, broccoli (really I mince this because I don’t want it to over power the other veggies), grated carrots, baby spinach, zucchini, etc. I also make guacamole from scratch (or if I’m lazy, I always have single serving packs of 9 of chunky guacamole on hand). For the actual meal: I use very little avocado oil spray (only has avocado as the ingredient) and sautée all four peppers, onions, zucchini, mushrooms, and any other veggies I want to add from my prepped veggies, until they’re softened and the onions are nearly translucent. While those are sautéing, I spread guacamole on the whole wheat soft tortilla, add tomato, green onions, maybe a tiny bit serrano or poblano pepper, red chili flakes (just a tiny bit). When the veggies are ready, I add them to the other ingredients already on the soft tortilla, wrap it up, add three tooth picks to hold this monster together, and voila, dinner is served. No added salt. No need for it with how flavorful this is.
(Edit: I also always have beans with this meal and sometimes add nutritional yeast)
So in 4 months I lost 40lbs and now I’m at 125, don’t need to or want to lose any more weight, and I’m never hungry throughout the day, since day one if this amazing and wonderful journey I have never craved ANY junk food or any animal product (my husband and son are not vegan so there is a little bit of processed foods and animal products in the house including milk, eggs, cheese, bacon, chicken, etc in the house -but I’ve experienced zero cravings and therefore, no need for willpower). My husband recently started eating my same breakfast and dinner five days a week with some non vegan foods in between (but not always), and he still enjoys his real cheese pizza on Friday nights and homemade pancakes on Sunday mornings with our son.
I never ate a lot of red meat or chicken to begin with but I did have dairy every single day. I think dairy is the downfall of the western diet. We have been brainwashed from toddlerhood that milk is necessary for calcium and healthy bones and protein. Same lies about cheese and yogurt. I don’t know what it is about dairy but it isn’t good for us. I wouldn’t suddenly go breastfeed from a milk cow so why do I need to drink it at all. They don’t drink our milk! No animal wants anything yo do with human dairy (lol).
So I started my vegan journey for health but within the first week I was in it for the animals.
If it’s at all possible, go vegan for your health and for the innocent animals that are tortured and/or killed everyday so humans can enjoy burgers, and pizza, ice cream, fried chicken, eggs, etc. I know vegetarians eat eggs, and good for them if that’s the only animal product they eat, but if at all possible, it’s best to either know exactly where your eggs come from and how the chickens live that produce your eggs, and even better, if you can have your own chickens that provide you with your daily eggs. I know the last is not possible for the majority of the western world because of where we live, how we live, space, codes, etc. Let’s just try to do what we can for the animals.
I know this is a very, very (very), long comment but I thought it may benefit even just one person or at least spark an interest in researching the crap food we’ve all been brainwashed into buying and eating.
Stepping off soapbox now. LOL
It sounds like vegan worked for you, but for me it was a health disaster. I had to switch to carnivore/keto after 25 years of vegetarian and vegan. Too many nutritional deficiencies and high blood sugar from all the carbs
Thank you i am trying out new stuff and your comment gave me some ideas
Thank you for writing this out. I do similar. Those morning oats really are filling.
Thank for writing this, Elizabeth. I absolutely 100% agree with everything you said, especially the parts about dairy and eggs which are a lot more debated. I'm a vegetarian raised in India who's consumed some meat occasionally. Here dairy is ubiquitous but I never liked milk, but I do love my cheese. I'm now working at being mindful of how different foods make me physically feel and realise that homemade food, without dairy works for me. Eggs are considered a lot more "non-vegetarian" or cruel here but between dairy and eggs, i'd choose eggs from a free range farm.
I'm still struggling to move away from cheese, but otherwise my diet is less cruel, more wholesome and my body and spirit feels nourished with it. I am also very happy to notice that while I still continue to enjoy junk / processed food (and it does tempt me), it does so lesser and lesser now, as my mind is making the connection between the food I consume and the physical experience of heaviness / drowsiness - I do not feel as light in my stomach and my movements after eating these things, while healthier foods like fruit, eggs, hummus with salad, etc. make me feel light and springy. I realised that building that physical awareness is key to breaking the addiction of these foods.
When is the book out?
Processed foods, convenience foods, fast foods, call them what you like, deprive our bodies of the vital nutrients we require to stay healthy and fight off disease. We need to educate ourselves on healthy food choices and eating habits.
Food Processing Industries have tapped the market, heavy advertising does the rest of the work
I would argue that a lack of self control amongst the population does the majority of the work
@@seankilburn7200 Masses are gullible, you can brainwash them very easily, living in India I understand it quite well now
No amount of advertising is going to make me eat shite, I know I can't speak for every moron though.
This!
In the 80s, most homes had stay at home mums whose priority was keeping a healthy, well-fed home. Now, both parents are at work focusing on career because they need to/ want to and as a result families are eating processed convenience meals because it takes less time to make and is cheaper. I miss the days when a parent (mum or dad) was at home and everyone would enjoy a home-cooked meal together. That's probably why seasonal/festive holidays are so popular because that's the only time you get a proper home cooked meal!
literally takes 20 min to cook something fresh, you can also lunch prep the day before or do something that can last 2-3 days :( If you can enjoy the process with the kids- even better. It's the mentality and attitute that needs to change from looking for excuses to looking for solutions
It is not cheaper. It’s proven that is is dearer financially and long term health care, unpaid sick leave etc costs households financially too. I think it’s lack of knowledge and skills to budget and feed a family that is the biggest culprit. For me I had both growing up. A mother home for the 70s but starting work 80s. Mum still cooked (precooked our dinner). With the invention of the microwave, we just “blasted it” for 10 mins. Processed Snack food and cereal was what was consumed instead of mums home cooking. Children should still eat at least a good item in their lunch box each day (salad and protein) and a decent home cooked meal. Make a slow cook or a meat side and add as many veggies (steamed on the side). It’s not hard and not expensive.
@@sweetycamy 20 mins? You mean unseasoned bland food perhaps
Well done feminism.
@@Mpz3cat Ever tried Chinese, Thai or Indian food?
idk how it is in the UK, but a trend ive noticed over the past decade: whole foods get more and more expensive where "convenience" foods stay roughly the same price
like eggs doubled in price since 2010 and potatoes doubled since 2018
I have a tip we are using in our household. You can count the items you purchase very quickly when unpacking or when making a list and double-check how much fresh fruit and veg you are purchasing. We do this and aim at 50% of our total basket to be fresh fuit and veg for one week. We aim at no more than 10% of junk (in our case dark choc, processed food). We cook 90% meals from scratch with occasional take away and there are many healthy meal ideas you can prepare in max 10-20min so it really is not much longer or harder than ready meals. We all eat the same food no matter what age and eat veg with EVERY single meal (and a lot of fruit too). Good luck everyone with healthy eating. It is not easy these days, especially with kids, but it is so worthy! :)
I like this idea!
As a single parent in the late 80s money was tight but we ate well ,I enjoyed cooking and making homemade pie's etc, but we ate a lot of vegetarian meals too. I was born in 1954 and our meals were simple but home cooked with fish and chips sometimes on a Friday, I remember ready meals starting to come in in the late 60s,fish fingers vesta curries and the Wimpy burger bar opening. So much ready food and rubbish now and our bodies aren't meant to have the additives and chemicals in food, it messes with your immune system.
I would have loved to seen this laid out as actual ingredients. I'm curious to know how much of that budget is going to the oils, salt, sugar, flour that he mentioned rather than the fresh veg they show.
When I visited London, I was suprised how much heat and eat food was at the supermarkets. Not many ingredients at the store, just ready made stuff. Great for me as a budget traveler, but I would hate to try to cook there.
That's central London. Once you get out to Zone 4-6 you can find better supermarkets that have actual ingredients as well :)
When was last time you saw a BOGOF on fruit veg or healthy proteins?. Always on sweets crisps chocolates and biscuits. Nutrition should be taught in school and doctors should spend more than a day during their training studying something so integral to overall health.
Absolutely!
Industrial manufacturing of crisps and biscuits actually cost less to procure than the fresh fruit and vegetables, it's all about the economics.
It used to be things like crisps or biscuits were more costly to make, and were specialty foods.
I was a teacher of cooking in uk secondary school. The subject was squeezed out because it was not acceptable as a university entrance academic subject. I’m retired now and I suspect it has been diluted or disposed of.
@@Magnulus76 People always argue that processed is cheaper. But in fact they're so unsustaining that you have to buy and eat lots more. You end up fat AND undernourished! People have been sold a crock of lies.
I grew up on a farm, 1957-1972 every thing we ate was home made, then I work on several smallholding. My work changed to living in London and my main food changed again. Quick snacks and a lot of Chinese takeaway...I put on weight. It was an accident in 1987 that made me start to look at what I could cook and I turned back to food from farm markets.
It seems to me no one mentioned about a) real income decrease per household since 1980s b) decrease of a percentage of housewives/houseparent taking care of the house full time c) reduction in outdoor farmer markets and d) average commuting times to work increase. It is not just one factor that has contributed to this, it is what the modern work life decay has led people to.
If you control insulin you control most major health issues.
Intermittent Fasting is amazing, eating two meals a day, no snacking, cut out sugar and bread and weight fell off me - down to my lightest weight ever and managing to easily maintain it now as I'm not fixated on food. Dr Jason Fung has brilliant TH-cam info on IF
Absolutely, I wish more people could be made aware of this scientific fact! Unfortunately our doctors and dieticians require re educating to understand that their dietary advice has been horribly wrong for years.
This is all about vagueness and lack of information, not seeing the bigger picture. A misleading focus on calories and obvious things such as processed foods (whatever that really means) and refined sugar, used to be saturated fats, almost serving as scapegoats.
I don't know why it is like this, but it is definitely the case. Seeing all these oblivious comments just proves how much of a lost cause this is. An essential lack of knowledge and wisdom is the cause of obesity and decline in health, not this vague BS. Thanks to the internet there is better information out there though (Insulin resistance, IF)
Here in the U S. I've watched supermarket freezer sections expand to l0X what I knew as a kid.
The US doesn't do microwave ready meals on anything like the same scale as the UK, though. We are the reigning champions on that front.
I think work places can help a lot if they have the desire. I work at a university and we have several subsidized canteens which include reasonably priced salad bars with many different types of fresh vegetables (including cooked ones such as lentils and peas) as well as healthy grains (such as bulgur) and lean proteins (such as tuna, low fat cheeses, boiled eggs) which can be added. So I can get a healthy delicious salad for my lunch at minimal effort (I doubt I would go to the effort of preparing that at home every day)
Back in the 1980s, the labour to cook food out of ingredient fell onto women assumed to be at home and do this full-time. This is a middle-class assumption too, assuming that one person can afford to stay at home. Now all of us are overworked, and our food supplies haven’t matched up to meet our needs for fast AND healthy AND convenient food, making a healthy diet difficult to make.
Yet it doesn't take long to cook most veg....
I was single mum with 2 kids i worked a 3-11pm shift cleaning, i would cook fruit crumble or buckwheat pancakes to heat up in morning for breakfast make their sandwiches for lunch cut up veg and fruit for snack after they left for school I would tidy up and start cooking dinner by 10 so all they had to do is heat up when they got home, weekends i would make bread and baked goods never packaged cookies cereals or pop. Sticking to routine and being organized was essential my children are grown with their own children now doing the same thing. And im still working 3-11 still doing it lol old habits die hard
Fast food chains and eating out a lot also contribute to this. Growing up in UK in the 1970's and 1980's there were no fast food chains available in our area and going out to eat was rare. I remember the first McDonald's opening up in London and I was so excited to try "American" food. I didn't like it. Back then almost exclusively our meals when home cooked. In the early 80's we moved to USA and the portion sizes were (and still are) enormous! Even today I can make about 3 dinners from the one meal served. If people eat this as "one" dinner I certainly see why obesity is a problem...
True. All we had was fish and chips.
@@stargazerbird love a good chippie! Newspaper print and all.
American processed food tastes excellent
But it is not good for health
If it didn't taste good, it would have been nowhere near as successful as it is
The precise reason people got addicted to it even though they know it is not healthy is that it tastes so damgood
@@larrybuchannan186I think it is more about cost and convenience rather than taste, a McDonald's can provide a cheap edible burger in no time at all but if you go to a family run restaurant/pub and get a burger it will take a while to come, cost a lot more but be infinitely more tastier in my opinion.
But what if your bulking
Of course if the first bar chart is calculated based on the amount of money spent on each of the two categories, then it could just mean the fresh ingredients are cheaper in relative terms per kg or per unit than they were in the 1980s (probably true in most cases) whilst processed foods are possibly more expensive in relative terms per kg or per unit, causing a person who buys the same basket of goods in the 1980s and the 2020s to be spending a higher proportion of their spend on the processed goods now compared to then.
In the later pie chart, it could also be that processed foods are possibly more calorific now for the same item, than what they were in the 1980s (which admittedly would still be a problem), thus increasing the share of overall calorie intake that the processed foods supply to an average person even if they are consuming what they perceive to be the same things. It's also notable that the data for this pie chart is said to be based on calorific intake, whilst the previous two statistics in the bar charts were measured by monetary spend on each of the two categories, so the two sets of data may not be entirely comparable.
yeah, changing the measurement makes it look like they are trying to hide something - perhaps that spending on fresh fruit & veg hasn't changed that much.
A nutritionist recently suggested that certain reactions I have might be due to the additives in ultra processed foods, so I started reading the ingredients for the first time in my life and my mind was blown. Most processed foods have between 3 and 15 additives!
Yup, time to read labels and stop eating the crap companies are happy to sell us at our health expense ...
What food additives in particular caused your problems?
@@MS-sd1uzseed oil is a really bad one. It causes inflamation in the body everywhere apparently so that's bound to lead to problems.
use Yuka to scan ingredients for additives
I have spent half of my life in the UK, and the other half in Australia. Surprisingly, Australia has held onto good British Cuisine better. It didn't get swamped with American style processed foods after the war like the UK did. Fresh foods grow all year round. Britain has better South Asian food, but Australia has better East Asian food.
What you are saying is simply not true.
Australians are big on eating fast food
Australia has a higher obesity rate than UK for god's sake
Australia is the second most obese nation in the world behind USA.
A nice manner to represent an information. Thanks a lot.
In the past 10 years I have been reversing this in my house. There are entire sections of the grocery store I don’t go into
It’s largely because most families have moved away from having a bread winner and homemaker. I stay home and raise my kids and I cook almost exclusively from scratch using lots of fresh ingredients. It not only saves money but it’s much healthier. We’re not wealthy but we’re not poor either. People can still choose quality of life over quantity of stuff.
Bless you and good luck with the kids, thanks for feeding our next generation proper foods!
This is true!
Sure, let's see these homemaker husbands do that, cause I for sure am not giving up my job
It's not always a choice - to have one person stay at home and be able to invest the time into cooking is a luxury.
Anyone viewing homemaking as a luxury has never attempted it. It’s hard work cooking, cleaning and caring for the needs of growing children. Not to mention elderly or sick members of the family. People have this idea that homemaking is like the Kardashians. My family is not well to do. But saving and making the most is just as important as making money. Many of the homemakers I know are immigrant women who stretch a meager salary. Yet their kids are physically and emotionally better off than many of the kids who’s parents both work just to pay others to care for their kids and feed them terrible connivence food. It can be more financially responsible to divide labor in a more traditional way. But make no mistake it is work.
Yep, to work out why, scroll down and write a list from everyone's comments. It's not just one change but the multiple changes to our lifestyle and the food products we choose and why.
Great visual presentation of a confronting concern!
The biggest consequence of this change in family habit is that there is now a generation who simply don't know how to cook because they grew up in households where the default dinner was pizza and chips cooked in the oven rather than something healthy cooked from scratch. People who grew up in the 70s and 80s would have learnt how to cook simply by watching their mother in the kitchen and picking up the knowledge subconsciously. Anyone who grew up in the 90s and after probably wouldn't have much idea what to do if you gave them a few carrots, some broccoli, an onion and potatoes and told them to make a dinner for four people.
It's not necessarily down to ignorance or a lack of will to be healthy but society is very stretched right now. There's a cost of living crisis, families are breaking up and in most households both parents work so the idea of a mother or father spending an hour in the kitchen getting the dinner ready - which used to be the norm - simply isn't possible for most people. They're then forced to resort to convenience and fill the freezer with processed foods which has future implications for their own children who don't pick up any knowledge about what real is or how to cook healthy balanced meals.
People think the answer is better food education and, to an extent, it is true however the real answer is that the government needs to do more to support families rather than constantly squeezing people and making it more difficult to survive.
Aside from avoidable disease and ill health, this change is also largely responsible for the explosion in plastic pollution due to all the packaging. All the while governments sit back and say 'the market' is the most efficient mechanism for organising production. What a total disaster. 🤯
Remember the SINGLE bin every household had emptied every week?
A metal bin, which is now replaced with a GIANT black wheelie bin, plus a brown one for glass/plastic and a blue one for paper/card.
Says it all - excess consumption.
Do not get tested in todays world stuff that can have another purpose or be repurposed should be
As a French person who had moved to London, I found it a nightmare just to find "normal" food in stores I could cook. Tesco express don't even have pasta, and Tesco extra don't have pizza dough you can prepare yourself.
Took me more than a month to find my way but even in Waitrose the food was terrible. I became a temporary vegetarian, not by conviction but because the meat didn't taste right.
I do love the UK, London is my favorite place on Earth, but my stomach was relieved when I left.
I had a demanding job but took eating healthy seriously. The hard part was just to find the right products.
„ pizza dough you can prepare yourself” you mean flour, yeast and water? I dont believe there are no shops in London where you can find them... and about meat I think there are plenty butchers shops when you can buy good meat, if you buy your meat in Tesco, dont be suprised by the quality of it.
In London it is better to shop at markets for better ingredients rather than supermarkets.
The old saying "You are what you eat". Words to live by.
I weigh about 65-68 kg over the past 20 years, height 178 cm. But during Covid for the past one year, it is really hard for me to maintain my weight not to creep over 70 kg. I am 69 years old. The older you are, the harder for you to maintain your weight due to declining metabolism.
well this is true. I'm 60 years old, 183 cm, in my early 50s I was around 70-75 kg but am now 90 kg due to poor diet (not being able to cook for myself at the moment is a lot of it).
How much of it is linked to the amount of time families now have have to cook? And how much is due to the increasing availability of convenience foods? I seem to remember the first McDonalds opened in the late 70's in the UK?
We had Wimpy before McDonald's was a thing, then fish and chips before that. I think you're bang on the money with amount of time families have to cook. Growing up, my Mum stayed at home and Dad relied on her cooking him his dinner because he always worked ridiculously long hours. This isn't a sexism thing, because my Dad loved cooking and is actually a better cook than my Mum. He just never had the time. (Working from home the whole year meant he was able to enjoy being in the kitchen more.)
It's not because it's open that you have to go. I understand the "availability" and "convenience", but we have to understand "It's not because there is a McDonald's in my neighbourhood that I have to go" the same way we want our youth to understand "it's not because there are drugs out there that you have to take them".
@@martinc.720 But consumers start young and if one of the group says "I fancy a Big Mac"! Then usually the others follow like Pavlov's dogs.
The latter. Advertising and availability. Because really it doesn't take that long to cook stuff
2 years ago I changed my diet from modern diet to 10000 years bc and I feel great 😃👍🥑🍎🍌🥝🥩🥦🥬🌶🦀🦑🥜🌰🧄🥚🥚🫖🥗
We can say that we have less time to cook properly these days, but on the other hand maybe things are easier than they used to be? With microwaves, huge fridges and freezers, soup makers, blenders etc., it's quite easy to batch cook healthy meals, don't you think? I personally think it's easy and cheap to cook healthily. But maybe some of us who are parents find it harder because children have become much fussier than in 1980? They've just got used to ultra processed food and it's hard to change that perhaps. So maybe for those people, healthy cooking is a pain in the neck. How do we help them?
they got used to it why? when you see babies with sugar cola in their bottles and 3-4 yr old screaming if they don't get McD... their parents taught them this... and when they cook at home they get fishfingers and fries 5 days a week and the last 2 days it is hotdogs and fries...
Having a fridge doesn't change the amount of time it takes to prep and cook food. I make sure I cook most of the food I feed my kid from scratch but I prioritise this over working more and having more money. Its a decision that didn't used to be made.
Generally mothers who used to have the time to prepare good fresh family food have been encouraged into the workplace. Time is a big factor.
A lot have to, to make ends meet.
@@sharonhill2602 because they first started working to get extra things....international holidays, more kids toys....on and on. Then industries and companies realized they could tap that extra income and over time couples actually now need the extra income. but also people still want the same lifestyle....together with increased cost of basics. I am old enough to remember that most women did not need to work, but a few did for the reasons I mentioned, then others thought we can have all that too. Sorry, I think greed had alot to do with originally.
This is not a criticism of today's working mothers, but an observation based on growing up in the 60's and 70's. I think the definition of making ends meet is generally much different now than it was pre 1980's. Few mother's worked, the ones that did more often than not, were single mothers. In the 1980's more women started working because they wanted to. This led to a cultural change in standard of living. What people perceived as luxuries pre 1980's are often considered necessities today. Again, not a criticism of working mothers.
Fathers need to do more housework
@@chrisoliva530 you've just said women started working because they were greedy and wanted holidays , that they didn't have to work but just wanted more luxuries! This is the most sexist comment I've seen on the Internet for quite some time and also not true , most of us women were tired of being stuck at home serving our men, cut off from the rest of the world but you already know that!
This shows not only the expansion of the processed food industry but also the availability of factory produced foods and also other parts of retail. The use of computing in manufacturing processes and communications saw a step change in the late 1970's and increases in production efficiency. Since 1980 there has been a big expansion of availability of everything from tools, vehicles and many commodities which is due to the internet, higher visibility and advertising. The way shopping has changed from smaller shops on the High street to the big supermarkets and DIY stores. As late as the 1990's we in UK were still going to many small High street shops for items, but by the end of 1990's you could buy all groceries in the big supermarkets and for DIY the big shops such as B&Q and the shopping malls started. UK had caught up with the availability boom that was seen in USA in the early 1990's . Six years later in UK the shopping experience in UK was matching that of USA. There was a revolution in retail from 1980 to 1998 due to commercial computing developments, monitoring the sales and marketing and manufacturing processes and it is still changing.
It is also true that more people are now employed by government and as a result there is more demand for taxation and no longer can a household have only one person earning the income. To sustain government the system needs more taxes and that comes from more of the population going out to work to make a higher percentage of the workforce paying tax. VAT was introduced to have an even bigger tax take to fund this change.
Now almost 70% of the workforce are employed by government agencies, education, councils, health, amenities , armed forces , central government, devolved government and whilst those are "service" jobs they are still taxed to feed the administration of government. Direct government jobs also have exceptional high benefits such as pensions which all need to be funded by taxation. Salaries however in the main have not increased at the same level, but goods have become cheaper. These changes are what has driven the changes towards "convenience" foods as more people ( specifically women) are expected to work even when maintaining a family. This was not the case in the 1970's as many women were looking after family in the home as a full time occupation. That situation was more relaxed and secure for children and is possibly why we see some behavioural changes now such as increased crime and violence in cities.
I always find the term “processed foods” a bit too vague as some people will include things like pasta and sourdough as processed (which they are) but these foods are healthy when eaten in moderate amounts. Also consider things like plant milks and hummus - processed yes, but can be made from simple ingredients you’d use at home. Not everything processed is bad.
In this video, they are talking about ultra-processed foods. That's worse than simply processed. Bread made from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast is processed, but add emulsifiers or colorings, and it becomes ultra-processed.
BBC make superb documentaries, be it from health, through to society. Great, eye opening content.
I think it has to do with culture too. I noticed living in the USA, it's all about convenience because people are all about independence, working, living apart from family so they have to pay more for rent or mortgage. They do a lot of things themselves, end up needing to work more or more stressful job so they feel tired and don't cook as much. But when I lived in Vietnam, I see many people live with family. Older generation cook for young. Even if young move away, they get roommates or like my cousins, all moved together to city and live in same home. Even if one marries, often times you still live with groom's family or bride's family. They look down on fast food or junk and keep watch of their health with fresh meals, lots of veggies. Fast food chains do not thrive in Vietnam because of culture and taste.
So the sugar tax was introduced back in April 2018, yet we haven't seen any subsidies etc in natural, non processed foods... just 1 of many many issues surrounding the British Diet.
See I think they should look at this information against the cost of living information too, because I know having quite a large household it's not always cheaper for us to get fresh ingredients. I worked a chef for many years and cook as much as we can, but issues with spoilage speeds and the cost of feeding a whole family from ingredients that often cost more to make yourself do effect our choices when we are out shopping. If they could make it so that fresh food is more affordable then I'm sure more people would use it. Fish for example is a great example, we live on an island surrounded by water but fish is one of the most expensive ingredients to buy, so we rarely can afford to buy it. The problem with things like the sugar tax is that it makes the unhealthier choices less affordable BUT it doesn't make the healthier one more so. If u can crack that issue I'm sure you would see a rise in the households buying more fresh ingredients for meals.
Yes wages need to rise and healthy foods need to come down in price
most veggies last MONTHS... people used to harvest them in fall... keep them underground or cellars for the winter to keep the frost off of them... but yeah they were NOT washed or pre sliced... but they LASTED... as soon as you WASH or SLICE them they spoil in DAYS NOT MONTHS... a lettuce head? don't pluck the head, pluck the outer leaves and that plant keeps growing all summer ;-) so you have 20 plants so you think 20 heads aren't enough... but you get like 3-4+ times more by just harvesting the outer leaves as you need em, leeks and many cales can be left in the garden all winter, some might even start growing again in spring, continueing to provide food until the new crops are grown in... but it's of course harder than buying the washed ones in the supermarket that spoil in days...
100% agree
@@LiLBitsDK People with yards, space and houses preaching to poor people about how to do better 😂😂😂
@@punkybrewstar83 maybe in your dreams, I have none of that... but I grew up with that stuff... and it's not because stuff just stopped working
Thank you for this video🙏💖💖
My family and I try to eat mostly healthy food, but sometimes we eat junk food, but lately this has rarely happened.
How many households can afford one member staying at home to prepare fresh meals every evening? Not only that, quick convenience food is generally cheaper than fresh. More over, a lot of families only eat one meal a day to help reduce cost, a cupboard full of fresh food would not last long enough when you are only eating four our five meals a week. Most people cannot afford to shop the way our parents did, veg from a grocer, meat from a butcher and so on. We now live in a world where every waking minute is devoted to working, just to keep a roof over your head, and the last thing on your mind is going home late of an evening and preparing a fresh meal for a family.
You don't need three huge meals a day unless you're a heavy-duty manual labourer!
It takes no time to make a fresh and cheap healthy meal!
I guess if they want us to cook, they're gonna have to make the work environment such that we have time to cook!
We need to work hard now and eat convenience foods to afford the medications and healthcare we’ll need from all the conditions we’ll have in the future when we’re all obese !!
@@pierrebornholm5599 😂
Sadly eating healthy is our requirement.. not theirs.. so nobody's gonna make it easier for us. We'll just have to do our bit to keep ourselves healthy
Thats part of the plan...keep u sick and dependent and in the rat race serving the upper echelons
We have to make the change
@@DD-iq8tq I kind of agree. It all seems a bit planned. I eat really healthy now. It's not expensive. I hate cooking too, so I don't spend ages on that. I don't buy stuff. I don't earn a lot. But I have more money than my friends who earn double. I use my money for doing fun things. If I do spend. Days out. I don't buy clothes, I don't buy things for my house. I don't upgrade my phone. I just buy what I need. I'm much happier. I don't feel like I'm in a rat race like I used to, before I made the change.
Not learning to cook, even basics? Less time to cook due to commuting? Greater desire for stronger, richer flavours that take more time and skill than even most home cooks ever had? Availability of foods to meet those cravings?
Curries, basic Mediterranean cooking and cooking in a wok are a lot easier than most people think. It's not difficult to learn to cook, you just need to learn about quick preparing, timing, short cuts like ready chopped vegetables and how to work your cooker.
a slowcooker is brilliant to solve many of those "issues" and it makes the cheap cuts of meat tender like butter and everything is way tastier
@Gaynor Lewis but the roast cares for itself in that oven, not like you need to look at it while it is getting roasted in crematoria
Remember 1980s KitKat adverts? "Have a break, have a KitKat" and one person splits the smallest size still available in half and gives it to their friend. .....
Yeah, I'm pretty convinced ultra-process food triggers binge-eating and overeating in general, because as he said in the other video where he punished himself with that food for a month, that food is hyper-palatable. When I cut it all out (because doc said I had to cut out bread, flour, gluten) I also cut sugar down to almost nothing (because I don't need much sugar, and now no treats like licorice.) Well, I dropped a size the first month and the fat just disappeared. And the book Salt, Sugar, Fat will explain to you all the parameters and many of the tricks of hyper-palatable "addictive" food.
Everyone watching cooking shows and not cooking whilst waiting for pizza and coke.
The best way to have a proper family meal is to make your plan for it every morning before you go to work. Check that you have the ingredients, put the meat to thaw out in the fridge, etc. Then you are not trying to decide what to eat when you are tired at the end of the day. Frozen veges in the freezer are quick, healthy and not wasted.
Basically a full time job.
Going to university in 2015 gave me a real shock when I saw how many people didn't know how to cook, and also didn't know how to have a varied and balanced diet. One of my housemates once told me his favourite vegetable was chips. When I said that potato's weren't a veg he thought I was lying. The guy went three terms without me ever see him eat a peice of fruit or veg. It also amazed me how many thought that ready to eat food was actually cheaper, and thought that cooking yourself was more expensive
Potatoes are a vegetable.
@@Chebab-Chebab potatoes (that we eat) are a tuber
@@dannywhite132 Yes, a type of vegetable.
@@Chebab-Chebab im guessing you aren't a botanist. Litterally a 2 second Google search would tell you you're wrong
@@dannywhite132 A 2-second google search: The potato is a root vegetable native to the Americas ...
Crock pots are a wonderful invention. I use to work split shifts. I could put toger the meal for the next day or do it during the few hours I was home. So dinner was ready when the family got home.
If I had used process food I would have been just working to buy it.
What this also show is how over worked people are. People simply are too stressed and over worked to cook from scratch!
Good point
People just think that they are overworked.
Most people would have enough freetime if they didn’t spend hours on their phones...
Simple meals need 30 minutes. And you can do the dishes while it‘s cooking.
Chopped tomatoes in a tin are your friend! You can make literally hundreds of fresh dishes from scratch using chopped tomatoes as a base. I do believe it is laziness and lack of effort. People worked just as hard, if not harder, in the 70s and 80s. And they didn't have the benefit of a computer in the palm of their hands with which to have instant access to any recipe in the world. There is no excuse for not knocking out a 30 minute fresh meal every day. Buy good essentials in bulk at the weekend, cook in bulk at the weekend if necessary and freeze the meals, ready for the week ahead if you really have a tight working week.
If you ate better food perhaps you wouldn't be so stressed?
You forget to take rising mental health issues into account, which makes it difficult for people to take care of themselves and their family so they frequently get foods that need minimal preparation.
@Oliver's mummy Unfortunately it is based on own experience 😥 F*** depression
Preparing food makes one less depressed. Junkfood makes people depressed they just feed into each other. The brain and it's complex hormones can't ever be healthy on junk.
Those shows about nutrition are really good. Well done the BBC
I have an American friend, she said that when she first arrived in the UK in the 80's she really noticed how slim we were compared to Americans, but now whenever she comes back from the states she cant tell any difference.
I was brought up by my mum most of my life as a kid in the 80s. She never had much money as she was unable to work due to ill health. So she was always careful with money and she home cooked. We had treats, but my brother and I had healthy home cooked meals.
I’ve carried this over as an adult with healthy food mostly and some treats in moderation. I’ve maintained a healthy weight and stayed trim for 30 years since then, and I have my mum to thank for that.
Attitudes have changed though. Less people are able to cook meals due to lack of cooking skills, lack of time or just laziness.
Being able to cook is a fundamental skill of life, just like managing money is.
As a society and through the media, we are also more accepting of obesity. I understand not wanting to offend people but it’s got absolutely ridiculous. The other night I saw three ladies that were all most likely classed as morbidly obese. One of them looked younger than me and probably DOUBLE my weight, and I’m over 6ft!
And not everyone can blame their weight on mental health or a genetic disorder. Back in the middle of the last century it would have been really rare to see obese people. Lifestyles and attitudes have changed with the result of plummeting health! This has to change now!
You're right. Same here: mom was a teen mom in the early 80s. She worked incredible hours as well as my dad and I remember we grocery shopped with a calculator. She spent her Sundays planning, cooking and then refrigerating meals for the entire weeks, in batches, because we lived on a budget and she wanted us to be healthy.
People will always find excuses, but in the end, home cooked meals are cheaper, healthier and better than processed food.
To me, as an immigrant in the US, it's been a shock: the number of very poor, very fat and sick people I live next to who apparently don't have time to cook a simple mean astound me. I feed my entire family for less than $100 a week and we eat meat, vegetables and pastry/bread (home baking bread isn't hard, people) daily. Only thing I don't make myself is pasta, 'cause I'm lazy sometimes!
@@mbethosseedcompany3307 I’ve had a few short visits to the US and when I was there a few things shocked me. Some people will buy dozens of bottles of bottled water in bulk rather than drink from the tap (although I think water quality in the U.S. is bad in places).
Also the road design makes walking and cycling incredibly difficult as it’s all so car orientated.
Lastly, when for a few days I needed to be self sufficient (very short trip), going into the supermarket to buy some breakfast cereal it was nigh on impossible to find plain cereal like corn flakes or bran flakes. All I saw was cereals jammed full of sugar, colourings and flavourings!
I’m sure if I looked around a bit I could have found healthy options but I felt bombarded with unhealthy options. This was about 15 years ago.
I’m also someone who cooks in bulk. If you do it right you can reheat a healthy meal in 10 minutes or less.
Parents are responsible for overweight kids, even animals are becoming fat. It's unnatural for kids and animals to be fat.
My mum cooked homemade meals every single day. But then, she did not work long stressful hours like I am! My mum also did not have a single hobby because almost all her spare time was spent on cooking and cleaning up afterwards. Our lifestyles have completely changed! How can one eat home cooked meals when they are travelling or commuting 3 hours for work?!
easily. if you are that short on time, meal prep for the whole week every Sunday. It will take you 2-3 hours but you will cook in bulk for the entire week. Get over yourself and your excuses. I bet youll be the one moaning about various health problems in due course because you cant be arsed to eat actual food.
Ask tokyo
"80% of the food is coming from ultrapocess foods instead of calories" brilliant!!!
How much knowledge in nutrition
Does anyone else want a spinach salad with carrots, broccoli, etc, after watching this? I think I’ve got cucumbers in the fridge. Good lord.
And this doesn’t cover the “new” ingredients like high fructose corn syrup that trick your body into thinking it isn’t full, and specifically put on belly fat-or the use of roundup on commercial grains, fruit and veg that cause inflammation of the digestive tract. I know it’s been banned in Europe but it’s so bad here in the states that ALL California wineries are contaminated with it-so it’s not just what you eat but what you’re drinking, also.
Well, there are only two ailes that have fresh food (meats and veg) and the rest is processed.
I’m grateful I’m from the generation that cooks 🙏
I was born in 1981. My parents couldn't afford much but we l weren't raised on complete crap either. My mom learned to cook (she was a young mom and she never focused on her mom as she cooked homemade food growing up) and we ate mostly homemade food. There was packaged foods of course, but it wasn't the bulk of my diet by any means.
I think because I loved to cook and had a passion for food from an early age, I focused on my parents and Grandparents when they were cooking, so I learned how to cook.
Growing up with a tight household income (my father was a fisherman with a crew, boat, gear, license) I learned to preserve foods that came on sale, and cook from scratch and create meals from whatever was in the fridge. Our diet was supplemental with fresh fish, moose meat, rabbit and preserved food.
I truly believe that having the skills and knowledge is key, but sadly not everyone is privileged to have someone to learn from. Plus, their food environment means they may not have access to a decent grocery store. Their finances may be absolutely stretched, either from wasting money on nonessential things or from absolute poverty or both. Also, there is genetics at play, where some people crave junk foods over healthy foods and have no control over their hormones for whatever reason.
No body is perfect, but just trying to eat a little more better quality food is a start. Take care everyone.
This is a very niche piece of information without factoring in the increase in living expenses and housing prices, meaning that while in the 80ties, one of the parents could have stayed at home, cooking 3 meals per day, now both parents are forced to have a job in order to afford the same lifestyle a generation ago could have been provided by one salary. This means both parents are exhausted after a long days work and food becomes an after thought, leading to an increased reliance to UPF and passing down the culture of microwaved dinners, instead of meals that take an hour to prepare together with the children.
Basically boils down to two simple things protein and fibre, they make you feel fuller for longer. Surprise! surprise!highly processed foods are usually lacking in both when compared to calorie equivalent of “clean” food
While I don't disagree with your point, I don't think that's the only factor. We also naturally (in the West at least) lean toward sugar, salt and fat and to an extent develop, if not an addiction, at least a predilection for them. We crave food which is high in one or more of the three and that leads us to poor choices (I include myself in this).
Another thing is that I drastically cut down the amount of potatoes I was eating and replaced them with more portions of vegetables l. Don't miss it at all, feel drastically healthier and get sick less, and on the rare occasion I eat potatoes, I appreciate them more.
That was an informative 3 minutes or so 👍
Seriously - ‘food manufacturers and some scientists (on the payroll) think ultra processed food is not the problem’.. I understand the need for ‘impartiality’ but the above statement is so wrong it borders on propaganda. Processed foods and the seed oils associated with it are fatal to your health.
it's dangerous to just label things "propaganda" or "plain wrong" Nothing's ever so black and white, especially when it comes to diet science, which is notoriously hard to research due to ethics standards (cannot do a double blind test)
on one hand, it's so obvious, but on the other, you can say the graph that shows vaccines and autism to be so obvious too. so just be careful of how you label things.
@Jay the government is at fault that you can't cook potatoes, eggs and peel some veg??
@Jay 😆😆😆 such well written replies.
I need help , he writes. I can't adult and I will blame others for my lackings. Why don't other people take care of me and I will just behave like an unpleasant ogre.
@Jay seem hard to make? Or someone is just lazy ;)
Saying there's no evidence casts doubt on it when there is a magnitude of evidence against processed food. It's an old trick. They did the same thing with cigarettes.
The sad part is once u start eating this junk there's no turning back. They are soo addictive
Baby steps. Over a long time. I've managed it. Just say right I'm not drinking any more fizzy pop. For example. When that's fine. Next thing. No more sweets. I also try to eat 10 plants a day. So like, nuts, salad, veg, rice. Whole foods. The more you cram in, the less hungry you'll be for junk. Your tastebuds will change. You'll feel so much better in a few days, and you may lose weight, start sleeping better, and so on so you'll want to keep it up.
The US started this first about three years earlier with the McGovern Report. That was where the now-discredited "fat makes you fat" mantra became the basis of government food policy and the implicit assumption that motivated much of the decision-making from here on in.
It's not just the kind of food that makes people obese it's how often people eat. When I switched to just eating lunch and dinner in a 5 hour period I dropped weight like crazy.
I do think processed food is a big problem but our lifestyles have changed so much everybody so busy it takes time and commitment to cook meals day after day its not a priority to a lot of people (not judging just an observation)the big companies know this they make it because we buy it they don't care if its healthy or not
No mention of the fact that women used to serve as unwaged cooks and that’s one way those 1980s ingredients you showed became meals. It’s not just about food economics, it’s also partly about gender politics.
Yes women have cooked for their families since the dawn of time.
In the 80s we were told we had to work now instead and unfortunately family
life was pushed to the side and we were conned into buying processed foods
as we didn’t have time to cook for our families any more .
Sold a lie !
Well Liz... if all you have is a hammer every problem is a nail... you are the exception, most ladies won't take on work involving hammers when free to make their own choice...which they have...Most don't see people were conned out of staying at home and looking after a family and being part of a team. The loss of a single income household regardless of who goes out to work is the great tragedy and many think it's great progress. When paternity and maternity leave are equalised and when one wage can be enough to run a household I think society will improve. If that state came about, guess what, more women than men would prefer and choose to stay at home.. and power to anyone who does... it's a more important job than any waged employment and should be held in higher regard by the likes of you who diminish the role of homemaker as part of some idealogical or political agenda..
I disagree, as many other household amenities alow for extra time in the household to cook time especially on a cost factor
@@PamelaD963 Nobody 'told' women they had to work in the 1980s. Working-class women have always worked outside the home or in their homes for wages doing other people's laundry, childcare, small piecework (like sewing), and other kinds of work. With the destruction of unions and stagnant wages that started in the late '70s, more middle-class married women had to start working outside the home for wages in order to support their families. A single, middle-class wage hasn't been able to support a family in a middle-class lifestyle for many decades now without carrying significant consumer, student, and mortgage debt. In families headed by heterosexual couples where both parents work, women still do the vast majority of the unpaid household labour, childcare, and the emotional labour and family administrative work of planning, organizing, scheduling, shopping, and cooking.
What a horrible, disgusting comment. What's next Liz, charge our kids for the food we cook for them? Maybe send the bill to the state?
“There’s no proof” might be the worst defense I’ve ever heard in my entire life
The visual is powerful.
People buy convenience, people definitely buy “tasty convenience”. Sales and marketing is designed to discover, promote exploit what you like and what you spend money on. Businesses are about delivering what you spend money on in a cost efficient way to make money. If people spend money on “tasty convenience” business will exploit that to make money. So you buy it because it’s there and you like it! The natural world has its own controls, so naturally you would eat when you can, you’d use up energy to source it, it would not necessarily be when you like and you certainly couldn’t purchase “tasty convenience”, thus natural controls kept weight down. Today you can’t walk 100 metres up an average High Street without being confronted by an array of “tasty convenience” at an affordable price (and then walk 100 metres back to our car to go home, sit down and surf the internet). That’s why we’re all porky!